


Subconscious

by phobiaDeficient (TheTriggeredHappy)



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Embarrassment, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Wet Dream, engie has a recurring dream and feels like an asshole about it. that's it that's the fic, too sexual for mature too feelings-y for explicit so its mature don't @ me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25399324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/phobiaDeficient
Summary: The Engineer has been having a little bit of trouble, lately. Namely, he's been having problems with getting a restful night's sleep.(based on a prompt received on tumblr that i got carried away with)
Relationships: Engineer/Spy (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 109





	Subconscious

**Author's Note:**

> [["Anonymous said to phobiadeficient: engiespy or engiesniper with wet dreams?"
> 
> it happened again, anon.]]

A mouth at his throat, whispered words curled pleasantly around an accent, foreign and familiar at the same time.

Hands, slim and bony and yet outfitted with leather gloves—yet bare and scarred and warm—yet leather and plush—yet bare and smooth and chilly, he couldn’t seem to decide, to remember, or even the state of his own arms, sometimes flesh, sometimes half metal.

Kisses, heat, sweat, a roll of hips against his own, hands on either side of his face to pull him closer, yet teasing at the bulge in his pants—in his briefs—

Moaning, being shushed, being coaxed on, by one or both or—

“Ah,” gasped that voice, with the consistency of smoke, of fog, rough like the smell of cigarettes, and that was what had the feeling kicking up in intensity enough to rouse him awake.

His breathing slowed, and alongside the general sweatiness he could associate with sleeping in such a hot and humid place in the dead of summer, he felt an additional amount of stickiness in the general area of his waist.

“Damn it all,” the Engineer groused when he glanced at his clock and saw he was awake nine minutes before his alarm was set to go off, and sat up to start cleaning up.

You’d think he was a goddamn teenager, really you would. Having wet dreams—not just once, and all about the same person, no less. His _coworker_ , no less. Every so often, just frequent enough to be a pattern, just often enough to cause him problems—it was embarrassing. It was shameful, he would even say. And yet it kept happening, and all because—

“ _Pardonnez-moi_ ,” Spy murmured, needing to lean past the Engineer to nick the tea tin from beside the coffee maker on the counter and incidentally brushing their sleeves together, chest nearly making contact with the Engineer’s shoulder, and the Engineer hoped to any god that was listening that it wasn’t too obvious that he was avoiding eye contact as he murmured that it was no problem at all.

Damn Frenchmen, damn close quarters, damn cramped base.

It didn’t help that Spy seemed to have very little problem administering and receiving all sorts of casual touches to assorted teammates—namely, the ones he didn’t find frustrating or appalling. He noticed that Spy seemed to have no problem with Medic offhandedly picking a piece of lint from his lapels mid-conversation, or needing to be crammed into a seat next to Heavy when the team shared transportation, or the Demoman’s general touchy attitude (although he did protest against the hearty slaps on the back that Demo often administered to him and all of the rest of the team). And the Engineer couldn’t help that he and Spy tended to be in the same spaces at the same time, that after switching up locker order he ended up in the one next to the man.

He thought that maybe Spy did pester him just a _bit_ more than he needed to, but even that made sense, with the other Engineer being a source of frustration for him, and his absentminded teasing (usually either about either being short or being from Texas) was much more lighthearted than it had to be. But all in all, he still had no right, no right at all—

He had to remind himself that he couldn’t exactly help it. He didn’t _choose_ to have wet dreams, and hell, he’d opt out of them if he could, they were making his life awfully inconvenient. He couldn’t control his subconscious mind finding the man so damn attractive.

He just also couldn’t quite look him in the eye at the table over breakfast. At least the goggles helped, just a bit.

The worst part was the paranoia. He knew Spy couldn’t read minds, that such a thing was impossible, that the idea of it was so ridiculous that it was only joked about once or twice among the team to explain how he knew so much about all of them. And he knew there would be no way for Spy to know—he didn’t sleep in the same wing as everyone else, usually just taking the little cot in his workshop, and cleanup generally just consisted of the usual morning shower, and he knew Spy would never stoop low enough to wake up early and peep on someone in the showers even if he _did_ suspect that there was something going on.

It was just that Spy had this knowing little grin. And he’d always had a knowing little grin, like he knew something you didn’t, or something you didn’t want for him to know, but this felt different. More direct. And often in the mornings. And on the mornings when that knowing little grin coincided with the Engineer being woken by something other than his alarm clock, it was enough to make him a little nervous.

Apparently that nervousness wasn’t enough to make his subconscious stop lusting over the man, though, because if anything his problem increased in frequency.

He knew that part of the issue was that he didn’t have a partner, had to rely on his own hand, and had needed to for quite some time. Longer than he’d care to admit. To be entirely truthful, he hadn’t had a consistent partner since grad school, and everything since then had been short and only somewhat satisfying. And... on most levels, the idea of being with someone again was nice, and the idea of being with Spy was—

“On your right,” Spy hummed calmly, stepping around where the Engineer was hammering away at his dispenser to pluck up a pack of bullets from the tray, seemingly unbothered by how he ended up practically tucked beneath the Engineer’s arm while he reloaded his gun and stuffed his pockets with a few spare rounds.

“Careful,” he warned almost automatically, the same way he always did when someone walked past him when he was swinging his wrench.

“I always am,” Spy returned easily, sifting through the tray and coming up with a new knife, tucking it away in his sleeve and pulling out the other from within his jacket. “More scrap,” he said half-jokingly, handing it to the Engineer. He stopped working long enough to glance it over, huffing a laugh at the way the blade was bent.

“What ran over that?” he asked, looking at Spy, blinking on surprise.

“Their Soldier landed on it, and me,” Spy answered, and although the dispenser was healing him, it hadn’t yet reached his black and blue eye or broken nose. His accent did sound a bit thicker than usual. “Either way, unfortunately that’s yet another custom knife ruined.”

“I could fix that for you,” he offered almost without thinking about it, and directed his attention to fixing up the dispenser further to hide how his face probably flushed at his belated realization. “If I, uh. Have time, between projects and all.”

“That would be very much appreciated,” Spy admitted, smiling in the muted and vaguely baffled way that meant he was very pleased. He glanced up from the Engineer briefly, and took hold of one of the straps of his overalls, pulling him bodily behind the dispenser.

He shouted a wordless protest, hefting his jag as for a moment he became convinced that this wasn’t his team’s Spy at all, but the shrapnel that very narrowly missed burying itself in his shoulder was enough to give him clarity, shielded from the rest of the explosion by the hulking piece of metal he’d been working on. Spy held on tight regardless until the sound of the nearby sentry firing off its own rockets heralded the demise of whoever had just attacked, then promptly released him, standing up and brushing himself off briskly.

“Thanks, partner,” the Engineer said, a little surprised, a bit flustered.

“ _De rien,_ Laborer,” Spy said simply, also brushing off the Engineer’s shoulder where he’d been grabbed before promptly cloaking, half-turned away before he was even fully disappeared from sight.

It was a full ten minutes later, when the Engineer lost track of his PDA and was patting himself down to look for it, when he found the knife in his front pocket and got flustered all over again.

And he did get done with the project he’d been working on, just as expected, and found himself worrying over the knife far more than he needed to. Because he got the blade un-dented and all, but then he couldn’t help but worry if maybe it was a little dull and had to sharpen it, and then he found himself worrying over whether the wood stain of the handle seemed a bit uneven just on that side of the handle and he repainted it, then he found himself really working hard to keep the little decorative details just exactly right, then he couldn’t help but think the clasp that usually held the knife closed was a little too rattling and loud for a man whose whole job was centered around stealth—

He ended up practically redesigning the damn thing before giving it back to Spy, who seemed genuinely surprised when he looked it over. “Better than new,” he commented easily, glancing up at the Engineer. “This must have taken quite a lot of work.”

“Oh, well, it was nothin’ much,” he lied outright, scratching at the back of his neck and probably blushing like a lovestruck fool. “Just a bit of an update is all.”

“It’s wonderful,” Spy said with a nod or two of approval before flicking it closed and stowing it away. “Thank you, Engineer. _Merveilleux._ Now I will need to think of some way to repay you.”

“It was no trouble, really,” he insisted sheepishly, not quite able to meet Spy’s appraising gaze, and Soy shrugged and allowed him to change the subject to something else.

“ _Merveilleux,_ ” an imaginary version of Spy would say again that night, breathed against his chest, into his ear, against his hip, purred into his mouth, against his thigh, into his neck. “ _Merveilleux._ ”

Spy was flicking that knife open and closed absentmindedly the next morning before battle as he talked about something with the Medic, and the Engineer needed to excuse himself to look for something he’d “forgotten” in his locker to cover how red his face went.

A mess. A damn embarrassing mess.

It was far too long into his predicament that the Engineer finally had a conversation with himself about a few things.

So he found the Spy attractive—that was a given, one that he found much easier to admit since he’d long since had the conversation with himself about finding men attractive in general. The idea of going to bed with the Spy was something that appealed to him, quite a lot.

It wasn’t just an aesthetic sort of thing—he found most parts of Spy attractive. He dressed well and treated himself well and made it clear through offhandedly anecdotes that he treated those he slept with well, too. His voice was charming and he carried himself a sort of quiet confidence and competence that was difficult to resist, and likely crafted such an atmosphere for that exact purpose. And in any area he wasn’t charming, he was at the very least endearing or outright interesting.

He liked Spy. He liked Spy quite a lot. And at some point clearly it has transcended a professional appreciation and ended up as... he was a grown adult man and would never have a _crush_ , but be very much did have an... interest.

And... maybe he was better off just admitting it. And maybe if he addressed it consciously, his subconscious wouldn’t feel the need to.

It was late, late enough that he knew nobody would be dumb enough to come and bother him with their problems. His workshop was dark except for the section with the cot, partitioned off with a rolling blackboard and some storage lockers and lit by a reading lamp. It was private, and nobody ever came by his workshop anyways, but it still took him a few moments—as it always did—to build up the courage to slip the blanket down past his hips, to palm at himself through his pajama pants.

He tended to avoid having any real kind of fantasy, anything involving someone he knew personally and interacted with regularly, relying on memories of past sights and experiences and maybe the odd skin mag if he was particularly desperate. But this time he let his eyes fall shut, let his mind drift to the idea of his teammate.

It was damning, how easily he could fall into that train of thought, how quickly he rose up beneath his own hand at the idea of Spy’s hands on his skin, mouth at his neck, voice in his ear. How easily goosebumps rose on his arms at the thought of Spy’s hands being the ones that drew him from his pants and boxers, how much he ached at the thought of lips against his own to stifle the noise that wanted to rise out of his throat rather than him biting his own tongue.

God, the idea of Spy putting that silver tongue of his to use, tracing against the lines of his neck. God, the idea of Spy teasing him, physically and verbally, hand tracing against hot skin just firmly enough to feel like something. God, the idea of Spy straddling his waist, or worse—better—beneath him, leaning into his touches and grinning knowingly—

It didn’t take particularly long before he was reaching for his discarded undershirt to clean off his hand, feeling satisfied but guilty, pleased but embarrassed. But hey, maybe things would be settled now. Maybe now he wouldn’t need to worry so much about needing to wash his sheets so frequently.

The very next night he was woken from a dream about cigarette-tinted passion before it even fully resolved and he was more frustrated than he had maybe ever been in his entire life.

Damn everything. Everything on the planet. He turned on the light and looked at his clock and it was somewhere closer to two in the morning than six-thirty, and he had a raging hard-on, and he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t get to sleep again before he’d taken care of it, and he was so sweaty that he was for _certain_ going to need to shower—

Damn absolutely everything.

He grumbled the entire way through kicking off his blanket, through digging through the drawers for a clean towel, through matching his way down the hall towards the showers. Through turning on the water to let it heat up, through stripping down enough to wait for it to heat up but not enough to freeze in the chill of the bathroom.

His grumbling stopped when he heard the creak of the door opening.

The sound of feet on tile slowed slightly a second after the door opened. “ _Salut?”_ an all-too-familiar voice greeted, and the Engineer was frozen still as a statue before Spy even rounded the corner.

He seemed to be the kind of entirely-calm he tended to put on when he was legitimately surprised by something. He wasn’t in his full suit, stripped to his button-down shirt (sleeves rolled up to the elbows) and slacks and mask and socks. Even his gloves were gone, hands bare where they held a towel and small caddy.

“Laborer,” he greeted simply, glancing the a Engineer up and down. “Having a shower in the middle of the night?”

The Engineer thanked whatever god was listening that he was still holding on to his own towel and could casually fiddle with it to hide the way his pajamas were surely still tented at the front. “Unfortunately,” he agreed, trying to keep his tone casual, trying not to act like he was in the middle of his absolute nightmare scenario. “So this is the secret for how you get away with staying clean without needing to shower with the rest of the team? Sneakin’ in here at midnight?”

“Closer to two in the morning, but yes,” Spy admitted. He ducked briefly into a stall down the line to turn the water on as well before returning to lean on the wall, raising an eyebrow at him. “And to be entirely honest, I would prefer that to _remain_ a secret from the rest of our teammates. I understand that they enjoy causing...” He searched for the word. “... _Shenanigans_ , in locker room situations. As though we were high school or college-age hooligans and not highly specialized murderers.”

“Like high schoolers, right,” the Engineer agreed, hoping his nervousness wasn’t terribly easy to read. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

Spy hummed. “Thank you. Believe it or not, I appreciate my privacy,” he said dryly, just enough so that the Engineer knew it was a joke, and he chuckled.

“Fair enough,” the Engineer shrugged.

A pause, broken only by the sound of the showers running. “Although I admit I’m curious,” Spy continued. “I understand you tend to shower in the mornings and following missions, not the middle of the night. I would have surely run into you by now, otherwise.”

“Cramped base and all,” the Engineer agreed, not quite able to meet his eyes and sure it was far too obvious now that he didn’t have his goggles on.

“ _Oui,_ of course. So I’m simply wondering what you’re doing in here.”

“Don’t worry, just need a quick shower and I’ll be out of your hair,” the Engineer assured, eyes locked firmly off to one side.

“I’m afraid that wasn’t the question,” Spy said, head tilting to one side in such a way that it drew the Engineer’s eyes back up again to catch his expression. “Laborer, do you take me for a fool?”

“What?” he asked, and he wished he were a better liar, really he did, but god, it seemed like he were caught anyways, so what was the point? And he didn’t even know how Spy knew, maybe he’d been acting obvious, or—or maybe Spy had walked past the workshop when he was on his way to apparently shower and had heard something one night, or any number of things—

And he was halfway through figuring out how to start his apologies before Spy spoke again. “Did you think it would seem like a coincidence that you _happened_ to show up in the showers in the middle of the night at the same time that I often do?” Spy asked, and this time his tone was dry in the way that implied it very much wasn’t a joke. “If you needed to speak to me in private, you realize there are few ploys that would be _less_ convincing than this. It‘s terribly obvious of you to track me down to here.”

“Oh. Oh!” he said, understanding hitting him like a truck. “No, that’s—that’s not it! Honest!” he insisted quickly, realizing what Spy thought was happening.

“Right,” Spy said in a way that very much insinuated he didn’t believe him. “So you have a perfectly legitimate reason for being in the showers at two in the morning when we have a mission tomorrow, even though by no accounts should you need to shower, or even be awake at this time of night?”

“Yeah,” the Engineer agreed, because he did.

“Well, by all means, what is it?” Spy prompted, eyebrow arching again. “I’m all ears.”

It was then that the Engineer realized he was caught between the metaphorical rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue. Because either he could go along with the lie that he needed to talk to Spy about something urgent and private—of which he had _absolutely_ no idea how he’d even start, too rattled and nervous and tired to even begin to think of a cover—or he could admit that he was up late because he’d been woken up from a dream where he was pretty sure he’d been making out with Spy in the back of his pickup truck.

He stammered for about a solid ten seconds straight before Spy’s eyes narrowed, drawing over his quickly-reddening face, to the hot and quickly-rising steam from the water of the shower, to the Engineer’s state of undress, to the way he so awkwardly clutched at his towel. His other eyebrow shot up to join the first.

“Ah,” Spy said eloquently, slowly. “It would seem there’s been a... misunderstanding.”

The Engineer was beginning to think there were no gods listening at all, just hell, forever.

A snort of a laugh from the Spy. “Laborer, surely you aren’t _that_ embarrassed,” he teased, and admittedly he was expecting to already have been torn to shreds or to have Spy start shouting at him, so this wasn’t as bad as it could have been. “We have heard the Soldier arguing with several of the other non-Americans about the benefits of circumcision, both in battle and at the dinner table, no less than three times this week. And there have been a fair share of stories and discussion of sexual experiences before among the team even besides that.”

“It’s different,” the Engineer scoffed, trying his best to save face, glancing away again.

“How so?”

“It’s...” He had to fight hard to keep his voice level. “It’s just different, is all.”

“When it’s you?”

“When it’s _you_ ,” he corrected, and closed his mouth tight.

Silence. He ended up trailing his gaze to the half-fogged line of mirrors just above the counter. Spy was looking at him, a contemplative expression on his face. He was adjusting one of his sleeve in a slow, calculated sort of motion, even as it was clearly absentminded.

He watched with only mild confusion as Spy stood up and began striding over to him, turning to look at the man himself rather than the reflection just a moment before Spy was practically on top of him, hands in his pockets, very close, so close that he had to tilt his head up to meet his gaze. Spy glanced him over for a moment as if looking for something, and apparently he found it, because one hand rose between them to tilt the Engineer’s chin even further upward, and he moved in a half-step closer for good measure.

“I would hope that I’m not reading this incorrectly,” Spy trailed, voice quiet, eyes flicking between the Engineer’s own pair and his lips and back again.

“You’re not,” he managed, and was actually rather proud of how level he kept his voice.

“ _Merveilleux,_ ” Spy said simply with that little smirk of his, and dipped down to kiss him.

And he tasted similar to how the Engineer had assumed he would, although he had apparently been drinking wine at some point not long previously, and had apparently not smoked for a bit, the two flavors mingling, neither terribly overbearing, surprisingly pleasant. And he was dizzied by it, had no choice but to push the Spy back a bit to earn himself some air after a moment or two, and then he couldn’t help the babble of words that followed.

“Wait, what if someone comes in here?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Nobody ever does,” Spy said simply, easily.

“I did,” he pointed out.

“Indeed. And how lucky I am,” Spy purred, and kissed him again. When he pulled away a minute later, the Engineer was even more dizzy than before. “But if you are that concerned, I can think of at least one place very nearby that we can go for slightly more privacy.”

  
He was guided backwards into the stall he’d been standing in front of, and slight brushes of fingers urged him out of what little clothing he still had on his person. Spy looked pleased as he stroked fingertips lightly through the thicker swathes of hair on his abdomen, leaned easily into the Engineer’s exploring fingers as he tentatively undid the buttons of the Spy’s shirt.

“I must admit,” Spy hummed as he tugged his shirt the rest of the way off, “I’m glad that one of us was able to say something.”

“Huh?”

Spy grinned that knowing grin. “Laborer, did you think I didn’t notice that you would stare at me for stretches of time and look away the moment I look back? And get extremely flustered whenever I got too close to you? And that you clearly spent quite some time making sure the heart carved into the hilt of my knife was just right?”

He flushed.

“It was very obvious. I was hoping to broach the topic some time soon. I suppose this makes things easier,” he said, and kissed the Engineer again, and again, and again.

And so many more times, so many more that he was yawning all the way through the entire mission the next day, and it took him all week to get his sleep back on track again, only for Spy to ruin it later that week by insisting that he stay in bed until nearly ten AM.

He would find that to be something somewhat constant with Spy, but it did end up coming in handy.

Awoken from a dream flavored like wine and soft like silk ties to the feeling of lips against his temple, his cheek. He tilted his head and cracked his eyes open to look at Spy, who was grinning at him, a bit tired but still alert.

“Pleasant dreams, _mon beau?”_ he asked teasingly, one hand trailing against his hip with significance, smiling all the more at the way the Engineer leaned into the touch. “About anyone in particular?”

“Maybe,” he admitted, and nosed under Spy’s chin to kiss at his collarbone.

“Hm. Should I be jealous?” Spy joked, relaxing into the attention.

“Nah,” the Engineer replied easily enough.

“Good.” A pause. “Regardless, how about I finish what was started, hm?” Spy offered playfully, and the Engineer found himself agreeing. And it was more skin than silk, more sleep than wine, but he found the real version of Spy much more satisfying either way.

**Author's Note:**

> [[tumblr is phobiadeficient and no this isn't supposed to be how long requests are this just happens sometimes]]


End file.
